The Pilot Channels, Blakeney, Feugh, Dandy and Crinan fields are located in UKCS Blocks 21/22a, 21/26a, 21/27b and 21/28a and were awarded to Pharis Energy in the 29th Round, under licence number is P2320. These discoveries contain nearly 150 mmbbls of oil in place and there are also exploration prospects containing 360 mmbbls of heavy oil in place.
Pharis Energy and OGTC have given the green light to Aberdeen-based oil and gas production technology business, Pragma Well Technology, to progress with manufacture and prototype testing of their Downhole Steam Injection Valve (DSIV) following a positive feasibility study.
Using advanced materials, detailed fluid design and innovative engineering features to maximise reliability for extreme downhole conditions, the surface controlled DSIV will be the first steam injection valve available on the market to meet UK safety regulations. It will be rated to withstand the extreme downhole conditions required for continuous high-pressure steam injection, and will operate at temperatures of up to 343 degrees Celsius.
Pragma Well Technology Limited (Pragma) and Pharis Energy Ltd (Pharis) have signed an agreement to pursue the development of a high temperature downhole safety valve, or downhole steam injection valve (DSIV), in a project backed by the Oil & Gas Technology Centre.
When we founded The Steam Oil Production Company Ltd in 2014, we adopted the Ronseal approach to naming our company. We planned to steam flood the Pilot field, which we had just applied for in the 28th Seaward Licensing Round, and we named the company after our planned development approach.
The Steam Oil Production Company (“Steam Oil”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a cooperation agreement with FluidOil, the independent international heavy oil technology company, to explore the potential of integrating FluidOil’s Viscositor Heavy-to-Light (“VHTL”) oil upgrading technology into an offshore steam flooding project.
On the 23rd of March 2017 the Oil and Gas Authority announced the results of the 29th Seaward Licensing Round. The Steam Oil Production Company had applied for four part blocks surrounding the Pilot field. We were delighted to learn that we are to be offered all the blocks we applied for and look forward to working with OGA and industry partners to progress a steam flood demonstration project on the Pilot field.
Steam Oil has a feature article in this month's edition of Offshore Magazine; just click on the cover page below to read the article which lays out for the first time some of our plans for a steam flood demonstration project on the Pilot field.
The good folks at Finding Petroleum have kindly written up an event report from the conference held at the Geological Society on March the 10th 2016.
Download the magazine here
There is also a video of the Steam Oil presentation which is available here.
Finding Petroleum are hosting a conference on Finding & Exploiting new petroleum resources in Europe at the Geological Society in London on the 10th March. We are happy to be presenting our views on heavy oil development in the North Sea and the Western Platform Steamflood project at the meeting. The tag line for our talk is "Twice the oil in half the time".
The Steam Oil Production Company is pleased to announce that it has entered into a sale and purchase agreement with EnQuest Heather Ltd to acquire a 100% interest in Licence P1996, made up of blocks 28/2b and 28/3b, which cover the Elke and Narwhal discoveries. The transfer of the interest is subject to approval by the Oil & Gas Authority (OGA), which would also require OGA's approval of The Steam Oil Production Company Ltd as licence operator.
Elaine Maslin of Offshore Engineer recently interviewed Steve Brown and Greg Harding of The Steam Oil Production Company. The article is due to be published in the December edition of the magazine, however the full online version of the article can be read here.
Steam Oil's Technical Director Greg Harding presented our work on the thermal reservoir simulation of a steam flood of the Pilot oilfield at CMG's European Reservoir Simulation Technology Seminar which was held at the Royal Institution on the 5th of November 2015.
When we talk to folk in the industry, about our plans to steam the Pilot, Elke & Narwhal fields in the middle of the Central North Sea, sometimes we get a pretty sceptical reaction, sometimes we don’t. I prefer it when we get to talk positively about the potential of steaming offshore reservoirs, but not everyone has an open mind. You see, that’s not how the industry develops heavy oil in the North Sea. How to develop North Sea heavy oil was all worked out in the early nineties by the people who put together the development plans for Alba, Captain, Harding & Gryphon, the last wave of heavy oil developments in the UKCS.
When we are presenting our plans to fellow professionals, we often get asked, why steam from the start, surely steam flooding is an EOR technique? It is a good question, as generating steam is not cheap, of course we have a good answer to the question and the more we think about it the better the answer gets.
Back in February, I wrote about how I expected upstream capital costs to fall as the oil price collapsed, and then in July, I wrote again with an update on how the IHS UCCI (Upstream Capital Costs Index) had actually fallen up to that time. Well, this is a further update on that, mixed in with a bit of speculation on how far the fall might go before we touch bottom.
Everyone knows J. Paul Getty's formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil; and pretty much everyone I know in the oil business rises early and works hard, some of them even strike oil. So it's hard to find many oil folk who don't believe in the quote, of course the tricky bit is the last part of the aphorism. Striking oil generally requires a decent dollop of good fortune as well as brilliant geoscience and that elusive material, money; however when we do strike oil these days we generally manage to keep it in the well unlike these pioneers in times past who needed to have a decent turn of speed when they struck oil.
Pharis Energy’s project financing initiatives have been featured in Mergermarket, specialist M&A publication with a global network of 300 dedicated M&A journalists and analysts who talk with CEOs, CFOs and industry contacts, reporting what they learn to Mergermarket subscribers.
The article is titled “Pharis Energy weighs 2019 IPO among field funding options”
Farmout and private capital injection also on the cards
Up to GBP 400m follow-on financing to first oil
Pilot field NPV of over USD 600m using steam flood development